Readings In The Economics Of War (Paperback)

MATERIALS FOR THE STUDY OF ECONOMICS READINGS IN THE ECONOMICS OF
WAR READINGS IN THE ECONOMICS OF WAR EDITED BY J. MAURICE CLARK
WALTON H. HAMILTON HAROLD G. MOULTON THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
PRESS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS COPYRIGHT 1918 BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
All Rights Reserved Published September 1918 Second Impression June
IQI Composed and Printed By Ihe University of Chicago Press
Chicago, Illinois, U. S. A. TO M W F FOREWORD When this war comes
to be reviewed in proper per spective its social and economic
aspects will be found at least as remarkable as the military
events, and perhaps more instructive. And among them the influence
of war on industry and the converse influence of industry on war
will take a prominent place. We are indeed witnessing a phe nomenon
so extraordinary and unexpected that we can see only its surface as
we pass, and are hardly able to comprehend even that. There has not
been time to look beneath and try to read the deeper meaning of it
all. But some lessons present themselves which he who runs may
read. Never before has the supreme concerted effort demanded by war
been so fully brought out and the inscrutable mystery of human
conduct been so clearly posed as in this prodigious conflict of
industrial nations. SHADWELL PREFACE This volume aims to throw
light upon the various economic questions which arise in connection
with the war. It falls roughly into three divisions, which are
concerned with the economic back ground of war in general, the
economic reorganization required in view of the necessities of a
world-war, and the economic questions involved in the
reorganization of the industrial system at the end of the present
conflict. The first of these threedivisions grows out of the
necessity for a proper understanding of what is involved in the
struggle. The theory of the economic interpretation of history has
lost vogue and no longer suffices to give a full explanation . Yet
however numerous and complicated are the factors that merge
themselves into the psychological matrix out of which war springs,
few indeed would deny that commercial rivalry, concessions,
imperial exploitation, and a conviction on the part of certain
political groups that war is a sound business venture, are factors
of the first magnitude in explaining the present struggle. A
consideration of questions such as these is of use, not only in
answering the question of what the struggle is about, but also in
pointing to the economic factors which deserve special
consideration in the peace which is some time to come. The second
of these divisions that concerned with the proper organization of
the industrial system for war is of primary impor tance. While
military efficiency depends upon generalship, upon the numbers and
quality of our troops and other factors, primarily military, these
are inefficient unless the industrial system is made subservient to
the military purpose. The importance of this cannot be overstated.
Here it deserves even more than a word of explanation. In their
readiness to meet an armed enemy nations may be divided into two
groups those whose governments, industrial systems, and habits and
customs have been arranged into a unified and coherent whole
directed largely to military ends, and those which without thought
for military strength have allowed these things to develop to xii
PREFACE meet the needs of a peopleat peace. Germany belongs to the
firstgroup, the United States to the second. In Germany the whole
industrial system farms, mines, factories, banks, railroads,
commercial agencies, what not had been arranged so that the whole
could very quickly be converted into a gigantic engine of war.
Railroads, for instance, were placed with a view to their strategic
importance, phonograph factories were built with an eye to their
conversion into munition plants, and science was whipped into
subservience to the requirements of war...